Never Been Anywhere (1997)

In “Never Been Anywhere,” Sandglass Theater adapted two stories by Vermont writer Castle Freeman Jr., which bring together two sides of Vermont life. In the first story, “That is No Country for Old Men,” two hired hands are sent into a field to bury a dead draft horse with a shovel. The older one, a man of 90, watches the younger man work. He sees in the young man his own bygone youth, and sees in the dead horse his future.

In the second story, “Not Everyone Can Be a Soldier,” a young boy’s father yearns for adventure and happily leaves sleepy Vermont for an exciting journalist’s job overseas in World War II. Left behind with his mother, a hired hand, and a head full of fantasies, the boy picks up hints of the secret lives of the people with whom he lives and to develop an appreciation of that aspect of life called mystery. “Never Been Anywhere” is a metaphorical look at a multifaceted world which touches simultaneously on one real culture, and on another world within each individual.

“The creation of Never Been Anywhere was my first experience with Sandglass. Just out of college, I had not the slightest glimmer of an idea as to how a theater piece was created without an initial script. Never Been Anywhere contains one of my favorite theatrical moments — that of a splintery pile of firewood transforming into a horse, and our simultaneous transformations from surly farmhands to patient witnesses. Performing that moment over and over, in countless settings, infused me with the practice of collaboration and the gift of an enduring belief in transformation.”